Soup kitchens and food banks in N.J. overstressed by increasing need

Andrew MillerVolunteers prepare plates of food for the hungry at the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen in Trenton on Wednesday, June 29, 2011.

When summertime comes and school lets out, it’s generally a happy time for children, but not for those who depend on school meals to balance their nutritional intake, says Mary Gay Abbott-Young, CEO of the Trenton Rescue Mission.

“Someone got up this morning and did not have food for their children,” she noted in a phone interview this week.

Advocates for the hungry say the wave of malnutrition sparked by the recession continues to victimize the poor and appears to be growing.

At 6:30 a.m. every day the Hillside warehouse home to the Community FoodBank of New Jersey is bustling with activity. Workers load boxes of canned food, precooked meals and fresh produce onto trucks, which then distribute meals to food pantries and soup kitchens across New Jersey.

The trucks are part of the food bank’s Hunger Relief Fleet, which recently added 10 vehicles, increasing its total fleet to 24. They distribute some 37 million pounds of food a year, feeding over 900,000 people.

Anthony Bullen, 47, of Elizabeth is one of 160 employees at the food bank. He sorts donations from stores’ surplus stock and community food drives and coordinates delivery to over 1,500 local organizations and feeding programs. “Before this job I thought there’s nothing I can do,” Bullen said while moving cartons of chocolate milk.

“Now, I get to see how many people actually need food. And that’s food for thought.”

But with a 40 percent rise in need for hunger relief assistance throughout the state over the last two years, increasing fuel prices and decreasing contributions, the fleet is struggling to keep up. As schools close for the summer, children are particularly at risk of going hungry.

Abbott-Young believes that over the last couple of years people have used all of their money to hold on to their housing. Now, faced with financial hardships, those people are not only hungry but homeless. She compares the problems facing those stricken with poverty and food shortages to a tornado, “just spinning, and spinning.”

“It isn’t just the food, the lunch program ... It isn’t just the copay at the doctor’s, the prescription, the milk. You start adding all that up, and you start saying, ‘I can’t do this,’” Abbott-Young said.

This year the Mercer Street food network is supplying 25,000 people with emergency food in the Trenton area, up 39 percent from 18,000 recipients less than three years ago, Stoolmacher said.

“We’re here. We’re here to be a resource to the community, but at the same time we’re trying to help a whole lot of people.”

While donations are key in food banks like Mercer Street Friends and others throughout the state, Stoolmacher says charities have been fortunate with growing numbers of volunteers, from individuals to businesses alike.

“We have hundreds of volunteers,” she said.

Mercer Street had 596 volunteer helpers at various times in 2010; they put in 5,416 hours of labor. That compares with 484 volunteers working 4,695 hours of time for the food bank the year before.

She thinks the government ought to be spending more to take care of the hungry.

“The mindset in government is to cut funding for food and nutrition programs — something which we believe is poor public policy,” Stoolmacher said.

“You’re going to have hungry children. Well, they can’t succeed in school if they’re hungry. You’re going to have adults, malnourished ... It impacts our work force,” Stoolmacher said. “This has societal implications. There’s a downside to our whole community when people are not well fed.”

At The Trenton Area Soup Kitchen, Director Dennis Micai said the demographics have changed, and while they don’t keep an exact record of those who enter the kitchen, he has also noticed more people coming for food.

“We’re up about 6 percent for the year. We’ll probably do close to 180,000 meals this year,” he said.

Micai said more older adults are seeking food while the middle group of 30-50-year olds has gotten smaller. It’s the age categories below 30 and over 50 that are seen more each day at the soup kitchen.

In addition, seniors on fixed incomes frequent the kitchen. Schoolchildren tend to flock to the soup kitchen only during the summer months.

But Stoolmacher questions whether kids are getting the nutritious meals they need even when school is in session.

“School districts are strapped with the amount of money they have, and they’re going to buy the cheapest food. It’s all connected — hunger, poverty, poor health,” Stoolmacher said.

Solutions are as scarce as food for those who visit the nonprofits for a meal or a bag of groceries.

“People need jobs. People need to get back to work. Until that happens, I can’t see things getting exponentially better,” Micai said.